


Fermata

by marxeline



Category: Borderlands
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 03:31:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6406927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marxeline/pseuds/marxeline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His perspective is all skewed lately. Not just in an obvious, sharing-your-headspace kind of way. His conceptualisation of space is way off, from the way Helios looks, hanging precariously in his peripheral, to the way he sometimes trips over nothing, stumbles out of the blue like he’s climbing a too-short flight of stairs in the dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fermata

**Author's Note:**

> Those who are to blame: You know who you are.
> 
> Where does this take place in canon timeline, you ask? Flat circle flat circle flat circle.

**fermata  
** noun (music)

1. A pause of unspecified length on a note or rest.

1.1. A sign indicating a prolonged note or rest

 

* * *

 

It’s been weeks since he’s had a decent meal, but Loader Bot managed to get hold of some edible-looking meat a while back and nobody’s passing it up. Rhys feels full and languid – almost comfortable, but too bone-tired to really get there. He’s aching and drifting in and out of focus as they discuss their plans. It’s beautiful out here, in the great maw of the desert. Beautiful and dark, and their conversation seems so small and quiet now while he knows the fruits of it will be too large to swallow in daylight. His perspective is all skewed lately. Not just in an obvious, sharing-your-headspace kind of way. His conceptualisation of space is way off, from the way Helios looks, hanging precariously in his peripheral, to the way he sometimes trips over nothing, stumbles out of the blue like he’s climbing a too-short flight of stairs in the dark. It’s becoming less clear by the day what exactly he’s reaching for – what the goal is. He doesn’t really know what he wants anymore and that frightens him because it means that maybe, if the desire hasn’t lasted, he never knew at all.

It happens mid-conversation. Rhys isn’t strictly participating in it due to the whole being-fucking-exhausted thing, but he’s nodding occasionally and making vague noises of affirmation. Next thing he knows, his hand is raised, fingers resting lightly on his temples. There passes a beat and his index finger crooks and brushes across his port – just barely. Almost like a breath, like a mouth behind his ear, a head bent around his neck. He shudders. Or, most of him shudders; His flesh hand feels detached from the rest of him, belonging to a separate sentience. The fingers twitch like mocking or the smirk Rhys sees when he blinks once, now twice, now three times and keeps his eyes shut for a second longer this time. The smile is, in a manner of speaking, all in his head, but he can’t meet Fiona’s eyes right now.

His hand drops itself to the table with a smack. A hiss of surprise has made its way up his throat and pushed through his lips before he can help it. Taken aback by the movements of his own body, sure, the mark of a totally well-adjusted guy. Fiona scowls. “Sorry if you’re dropping off over there, Rhys, but if we could just have your attention for a little while longer we’d appreciate it. Truly.” She sing-songs that last part and the drawn out vowels trigger associations in his subconscious. He struggles not to blink and tries not to think about how he’ll sleep.

When he says goodnight not long after nobody questions it, not even Fiona. He figures he probably looks a bit peaky. It’s not the most accurate word to describe how he’s _feeling_ but then again he’s not sure an accurate word exists at all.

Kicking off his shoes, Rhys sits on the edge of the bed and holds his breath, taking in the prickling quiet. His skin feels waxy and uncomfortable. Even his right arm hums with something like blood. But not quite. That’s when Jack finally appears, and Rhys’ shoulders relax even as his _mind_ tenses. Rhys is a walking contradiction, his body betraying him – giving him up before the pliers are even out of the case.

“Hey, long time no see,” Jack makes a show of sitting down and shuffling right up next to Rhys so that their thighs are nearly touching. Except not really. But Rhys’ body doesn’t seem to care about that because his leg muscles are clenching slightly in the anticipation of touch, regardless. “How are we doing today, pumpkin?” As if it hadn’t been just something like six hours since Jack had been hollering his support as Rhys – and Fiona – took out a couple of psychos on the road back aways, like a sadistic cheerleader.

Something twitches in Rhys’ flesh hand and he wonders if it’s reflexive or it it’s Jack. He says nothing, only looks at Jack’s grin and tries to keep his stare as even as possible.

Then his hand is back at his temple and his eyes are shut. Jack presses down, and Rhys squirms.

“You asshole.” He doesn’t mean for it to come out so broken, but it spurs Jack on, and he can’t say if he’d take it back.

It’s not barely-there anymore. It’s nothing like a breath, like ghosting. What Rhys feels on the surface of it, at the metal edge of his temple, is insistent and pressing and sharp. Beyond that – under his skin, in his mind – everything is hot and pulsating. Outside his skin is pinching and immediate; Inside, he aches. As the sensations mingle and Rhys starts to accustom himself to them, Jack dips a finger inside. Only for a second. Rhys cries out. He feels most exhaustingly alive, wrung out and on fire. Jack removes his hand from the port once again. Rhys lays back on the bed– Jack _lets_ him lay back on the bed, knees hooked over the edge and feet dangling. One thigh twitches and his legs spread a little.

Jack’s eyes roam appreciatively down Rhys’ torso, his legs. There’s a heavy inevitability present in the room: Rhys spread out on his back; The way his cybernetic hand splays; How Jack is fixated on the spot just above his collar. All that’s required is the flick of a switch. All Rhys has to do is acknowledge it, his position. A “Please–” finally escapes, a seal on the envelope. He’s almost relieved at the articulation of it despite the total lack of relief anywhere else in his body or mind. But then he can’t form words at all. He can barely make a sound because with that same swift autonomy his hand – his cybernetic hand – is at his throat, instantly vise-like. Not autonomy, no. It’s not acting of its own accord, it’s under Jack’s control and that is not a line of thought Rhys wants to pursue right now even though he knows very well what lays in wait at the end of it. He kicks back at the bed-frame and stretches, his whole body screaming and purring in counterpoint.

Jack flickers a little in what Rhys can only interpret as appreciation. He resigns himself to the fact he _wants_ to interpret it as such and on embarrassing reflex tries to swallow, choking a little against his own fingers. They tighten in response, the base of his palm now putting exquisite pressure on his Adam’s apple. Jack chuckles and it reverberates, around the room and in Rhys’ head. His voice comes out velvet-lined. “Oh Rhysie, you’re a picture.” With that, Rhys’ flesh hand is raised once again, but slowly this time, deliberately. Done so that Rhys really knows it’s Jack doing it, feels it in the bend of his elbow, the flex of his biceps. Jack pauses to brush Rhys’ jaw before walking his fingers up his cheek. He starts to hum. Low in Rhys’ chest potential noises form but they can’t make it out so they build and give fuel for the flames licking relentlessly at Rhys’ lungs. His index finger traces the rim of the port and Rhys feels some part of him short-circuit.

There is friction at the parts where metal meets flesh: his throat, his hands, his head. Hot, kinetic, it is sharply aware of the division in him, of him. Jack releases his grip on Rhys’ neck, fingers still resting on the places where bruises will form tomorrow. “Come on, Cupcake. Let me hear how wrecked you sound.”

Rhys shivers. He can’t find words. All he can do, _all he can do_ , is catch Jack’s eye and hold it – much as he can when his focus is fuzzy and his ability to concentrate is this compromised – before rolling his own eyes up to the left, where his own ( _is it his?_ ) finger is still circling the ring of metal, refusing to dip inside. He’s afraid to ask, but he has to. It’s all he _can_ do. “More.” Jack’s smile is feral and Rhys can’t help it, can’t help rolling his hips forwards as the pride and shame pool and mix in his bloodstream because he did that: He made Handsome Jack smile. Rhys’ eyes water.

“Hot damn, you are shameless.” He punctuates the last three words each with the tap of Rhys’ index finger against the edge of the port and Rhys _groans_ this time, it comes out hoarse but by no means quiet. Or lacking in shame. Jack growls in return. “Do. That. Again.” Rhys does. Jack is building up a rhythm now, chuckling words of praise as Rhys’ groans grow higher in pitch until he’s practically mewling, one hand still resting at his throat, hips struggling against air, eyes wet. How he looks right now he can’t begin to imagine. All he knows is that Jack likes what he sees, and the thought of that only sets him on fire anew.

“Jack,” he finally manages, and this time it is quiet. It would be almost reverent if he didn’t sound so fucked out of his mind. He focuses. Jack raises an eyebrow in response, interrupts the rhythm but keeps Rhys’ finger raised, poised before an inevitability. “Please.”

His hand clamps down. His fingers dig, thumb-over-pulse, heel of the palm pushing up– his mouth falls open, head tips back.

There are no lines left to erase.

Jack releases his throat fully now, undoing the top two buttons and trailing his hand lightly down his chest. Rhys swallows, feels the burn of it, swallows again. Jack doesn’t miss a thing. “Like I said: Shameless.” One bullet-quick movement and his hand is palming at the front of his pants. This time Rhys’ response-time is on par with Jack’s and he bucks madly, keening for more. He takes a gulping, ragged breath.

“See, kid? We make a damn good team.”

“Jack,” Rhys pleads. He can feel the tear tracks drying on his cheeks.

Jack circles the port once, this time with a pressure which is over too soon, then grasps at Rhys’ neck. “What do you want, Rhysie? You’ve got to choose.” Jack emphasises this with a particularly hard tug and Rhys can’t articulate it, can’t choose, _can’t._

Rhys has enough give under his fingers to tip his head back, baring the length of his throat. “Please,” he rasps at the ceiling.

His hand is closing again in an instant, tight and tightening.

“You’re a star,” Jack purrs in his ear, and Rhys can do nothing then but come, silently, vision whiting out.

When he wakes up, on top of the sheets with legs still dangling off the edge of the bed, he feels hungrier than he can ever remember being. It’s the kind of hunger where nothing is appetising and he’s fairly certain nothing would serve to diminish it: This cavernous feeling spreading in him.

Jack isn’t there. There had been no dreams last night, either, and Rhys wonders where all that sentience goes when he himself is not consciously aware of it. More roads to never go down.

The sun is rising. He has to go.

 

* * *

 

They stop in some backwater town just as the sky is darkening and Rhys’ organic eye begins to strain. Cool wind licks at his hair with the promise of bitter cold to come. They scout out an eating house soon enough and Rhys, shivering, looks back over his shoulder at the threat of indigo encroaching; the neon haze of the atmosphere; the way the road is erased behind them. He follows the others inside.

Seated, he sounds off his order – basic, habitual food he knows is served everywhere – and smiles gratefully at Fiona, out of whose wallet they’re all eating. She shrugs. Money is as easily acquired as wasted in her book, which is more than can be said for mostly anything Rhys knows of. His shoulder twinges and he rubs absently at a bruise. Or, another part of him rolls his fingers with intent. Either or. There’s little point in trying to discern a difference now.

He’s not so hungry now – or, he’s hungry, but in a fixable, human way borne of homeostasis and circumstance. There is, he thinks, an ordinary amount of space in him, for now.

Outside, on his own. He reaches up to touch the side of his head, taps just once at the port with the pad of his index finger. Nothing. It barely alerts the nerves. He half expects to be laughed at, for Jack to spring ecstatically out of the dark and into the porch light to tease him, tell him exactly how pathetic he is, as if he doesn’t already know. (Just in case, Rhys scans the area. There’s a small, sick glimmer of hope in him.)

Instead, there is deliberate silence. The desert sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [here](http://prousts.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
